A couple of things are interesting about this. I did a little digging in the Department of Energy website, and found that power prices have gone up about a penny per Kwh over the last five years, but are still nowhere near the highs they reached in the 1980s.
What I find interesting is that the private sector is responding to instability in Washington by essentially assuming that change will come eventually, and it's simply best to head it off, but without any guarantee of what might happen on way or the other. I also think it's interesting that we've reduced our national share of coal generating capacity by 5% as compared to other generating sources, but without any serious uptick in energy costs, at least, not that could be conclusively traced back to a switchover to cleaner burning natural gas and to a lesser degree, renewables.
Three of the biggest arguments against climate change legislation is that it would create a huge financial burden that would explode the price of electricity, that it would constitute undue government meddling in the private sector, and that it would create a mess of regulations.
Near as I can tell, changes are already occurring that don't appear to be having a noticeable affect on power prices, and any uncertainty in the market right now is coming from a lack of knowledge on what a new regulatory regime is going to look like. Everyone assumes it is coming, but planning for it is becoming difficult. Wouldn't it make more sense for the sake of the economy to pass climate change legislation now so power companies actually know what to expect when making long term multi-billion dollar deals?
I've read numerous articles about how scared companies are of two big uncertainties: State regulations and the EPA. If 50 different states decide to implement 50 different standards for reducing greenhouse gases, that's the real regulatory nightmare for power companies. Furthermore, the EPA stands poised to regulate CO2 as an air pollutant, which could have far more disastrous and far-ranging effects for power generation companies.
I think beyond the specifics of this discussion, this is an excellent example of how stymieing efforts in Congress with the hopes that the problem will simply keep until a later date are doomed to fail. There are simply too many big problems with too much riding on them to keep until Congress decides to solve the problem. States' rights folks might take this as a great thing, since state governments, seeing gridlock in Congress, will take action on their own. I commend them for not waiting, but Congress is going to start creating huge nightmares for multi-state corporations if they don't get their act together soon on issues like this.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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This shows how twisted the whole climate change debate has gotten. China notes the problems and their ability to address them, and whammo! they're easily claiming the lead on alternative energy development. Corporations see the trends, and shablam! the start enacting changes moving away from dirty fuels and towards cleaner ones.
The US government is looking at the same data, the same trends, the same projections and struggles to even have a coherent debate about the topic.
quote:“Don’t mention global warming,” warned Nancy Jackson, chairwoman of the Climate and Energy Project, a small nonprofit group that aims to get people to rein in the fossil fuel emissions that contribute to climate change. “And don’t mention Al Gore. People out here just hate him.”
quote:“Climate change is real, and man is causing it,” Mr. Hill said, echoing most climate scientists. “That is indisputable. And we have to do something about it.”
A rain of boos showered Mr. Hill, including a hearty growl from Norman Dennison, a 50-year-old electrician and founder of the Corydon Tea Party.
“It’s a flat-out lie,” Mr. Dennison said in an interview after the debate, adding that he had based his view on the preaching of Rush Limbaugh and the teaching of Scripture. “I read my Bible,” Mr. Dennison said. “He made this earth for us to utilize.”
And yes, I am biased. I work in climate research. The people I interact with are all convinced that anthropogenic climate change is real. Most of them support climate legislation because we study the trends and can very easily see what'll happen if we do nothing. So I talk with my colleagues and we discuss strategies, problems, uncertainties, and what needs to be done. I then open up the NYT and read the "I read my Bible" quote and am left speechless.
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:And yes, I am biased. I work in climate research. The people I interact with are all convinced that anthropogenic climate change is real.
That is because they have sold out to liberal politics and are so invested in it that they can't see the truth anymore and they'll say anything to get funding and they can't be trusted at all anyway and have you ever met a climatologist anyway
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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